The Social Role of History and the Question of Egalitarian Historical Writing

In this paper, I address a question relevant for the social role of history, namely: what relation between historical studies and society can be established by egalitarian historical writing? Drawing on the contributions of María Inés La Greca, Zoltán Boldizsár Simon, and Kalle Pihlainen, I critically discuss how contemporary historical theory responds to this question in the debate on Hayden White’s distinction between historical past and practical past. By discussing the three theorists’ contributions, I show that the relationship between historians and their audiences produced in them is asymmetrical. All of them, albeit varying degrees, describe historical writing as acts of communication in which historians are placed in the position of those who know better and act, while readers are assigned the position of those who are less well informed and who should submit to the actions of historians. Using the resources of postcritique, I point to the need for theoretical elaboration—the construction of instruments and concepts to handle the question of producing democratic relations in historical writing. In conclusion, I suggest a brief description of the democratic reading contract of historical writing based on the concept of receptivity.